April is a month we Sri Lankans celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and let me wish each and everyone of our dear readers and advertisers, Suba Aluth Avuruddak Wewa!

Twenty twenty three! A milestone year for the Hi!! Magazine as we celebrate our 20th Anniversary! Absolutely delighted that we have made it through two decades of highs and lows - not only have we survived our many challenges but have maintained our premier position as the most sought after society magazine in Sri Lanka!

As we stand on the cusp of celebrating 20 years, we dedicate this issue to the Diaspora who have been our staunchest supporters since we hit the stands almost 2 decades ago. In this issue, we feature events from Canada, Netherlands, Australia, United Kingdom and the USA which goes to show that Hi!! Magazine does indeed have a global reach. For those especially in the Diaspora who wish to subscribe to the digital copy of Hi!! Magazine you can download it from the APP store or Magzter.

As the world spins from one crisis to another, the wheels of industry stoically turn and we at the Hi!! Magazine have been busy covering various launches and other events to bring you the best that our island has to offer in terms of entertainment.

After a hiatus of four months we are back on the stands. Feeling the pain of the masses and out of respect for everyone severely affected by the crisis we refrained from publishing our June issue. However as the wheels of industry need to turn we are proud to present our August issue with MasterChef Australia contestant Dulan Hapuarachchi as our coverboy. Dulan wowed the judges and audiences with a combination of Sri Lankan delights and his suave personality. A catastrophic disaster with waffles saw him voted off the show well before his time. In an exclusive interview with Hi!! Magazine Dulan talks about his life changing experience as a MasterChef contestant. 

The Hi!! Magazine is known for featuring interesting people and we deliver on this issue by talking to Shan de Silva, our Cover boy, who threw caution to the winds as he spoke of his journey identifying as non binary and the liberating experience of being gender fluid.

In this issue we feature an amazing group of women, super achievers who are trailblazers as we celebrate International Women’s Day on the 8th of March! They have launched cutting edge businesses, shown the world how to be top entrepreneurs in a man’s world, to be socially responsible and survive 
 childhood sexual abuse. These are an eclectic mix of role models who shatter glass ceilings!

Our cover boy is a Superstar! Why? Not only did the Sri Lankan- Italian designer Andrea Brocca’s graduate collection have the world’s fashion press swooning over him, but he happens to hold the rare title of being hailed as the World’s Youngest Couturier by Guinness World Records! This young prodigy had dressed Lady Gaga for the cover of Billboard magazine amongst
other celebrities. Now making a mark in this highly competitive industry, Andrea at 26 is being compared to the genius Alexander McQueen!

As we enter a new chapter in the history of the Hi!! magazine with our 101st issue, I am yet again grateful that with a never ending global pandemic coupled with on and off lockdowns at home and abroad, we were able to find amazing content for a riveting issue full of interesting features and fashion. In these hard times, we were thrilled to find such inspirational role models - trail blazers who followed their hearts, crushing obstacles on the way to achieve world wide success and recognition!

Surreal. 
That’s what I feel as I write my 100th editorial for this milestone issue. And infinitely grateful. 
Grateful for the challenge and opportunity offered to me back in 1999 to be the Editor of the new lifestyle magazine. It’s been two decades since the initial talks and 18 years since the first issue of Hi!! magazine was published in 2003. Back then, we had no idea how long the magazine would survive or in the first instance, how it would be received by the Sri Lankan reader.

So after almost an year on, we are back where we started in March 2020: locked down! And staring squarely in the face of an impending third wave of Covid-19 with its dreaded new mutations!

Greetings to all our loyal readers, both here and worldwide in this month when we celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil New Year! A ray of light is in sight, now that the vaccination programme is well underway. We sincerely hope that everything will be back to normal soon!

Welcome to 2021, a brand new year which we hope will be quite different from the last one! We are just able to glimpse the silver lining with a vaccine for the dreaded Covid-19 about to be rolled out in Sri Lanka. Let’s hope the mass vaccination programme will enable us all to get back to life as we knew it and a sense of normalcy.

2020 will be remembered in the annals of history as ‘The Year that Never Was’. It was far more devastating than ‘Annus Horribilis’, the earlier definition for the most calamitous year. There is nothing to compare the catastrophe 2020 turned out to be!

We Sri Lankans are a resilient lot. We have faced terrorism, the tsunami and most recently the Easter Sunday attacks and come out stronger. We are one of the few lucky countries where the casualties of the dreaded Covid-19 pandemic is in double digits, thanks to the efficiency of those that make the decisions. Sadly, as I write, a new cluster has emerged just when the country was getting back to a new normal.

Taking the new normal in our stride we are proud to present the latest issue of the Hi!! with Nethra Tilakumara as our covergirl. Part of the next gen of Brit Lankans, dusky beauty Nethra is making her mark in the British entertainment industry. As a child, she starred alongside Angelica Houston in the cult kids’ movie Horrid Henry. More recently she has appeared in BBC shows such as Our Girl and played one of the lead roles as a bisexual Asian woman in the hit TV show Flatmates.

When we danced our way into 2020, that faraway day at the dawn of a brand New Year, did we ever expect this debacle to happen? Then Covid-19, Lockdown, the New Normal were words foreign to us. Now having lived life under all three, we are hopefully limping back to life, hoping for normalcy in a wholly different world.

When the first edition of Hi!! Magazine came out in 2003, with just a few of us in the editorial staff, we had no clue that we would make such a dramatic difference in the publishing world. No such lifestyle magazine was in existence in Sri Lanka, though many aimed at women alone were!

Celebrating the achievements of Sri Lankan women and men the world over, continues to be a reason d’etre of Hi!!. This issue is no exception as we feature our covergirl Kumi Jinadasa. An engineer who works as a mission manager at the Canadian Space Agency, Kumi has seen her career soar to galactic heights. Combining bodybuilding for which she has won numerous awards in Canada, Kumi is the perfect role model who demonstrates that combining passion, determination and a hunger for success can help you literally reach for the stars.

The definition of beauty can often be subjective and contentious and no one knows this better than our covergirl in this issue Sevmi Fernando, the 2nd runner up in the Miss Italy 2019 pageant. Sevmi, born and bred in Italy and of Sri Lankan descent weathered a storm of controversy over her eligibility to represent the modern Italian woman.

With more and more women coming to the fore in all industries we are particularly thrilled to have as our covergirl the dynamic Linda Speldewinde. Identifying a niche in the market for creative personnel in Sri Lanka, Linda founded the Academy of Design which has become a hotbed for creating design talent.

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Hi!! Magazine is Sri Lanka’s first and  premier society magazine and now in its 11th year. Begun with the concept of portraying Sri Lanka in a positive light, Hi!! put within its pages the high fashions of the gliteratti and the literati, parties and the glitz and glamour of not only Colombo but also of major cities around the world where Sri Lankans gather.  It also features trendy Conde Nast winning boutique hotels, resorts and restaurants, the Who’s Who from Hollywood to Bollywood, tourist attractions like whale and dophin watching, what to do and how to do it – with Hi!! projecting Sri Lanka as the ultimate tourist destination.

Best Dressed 2017

HI Best Dressed 2016

HI Best Dressed 2015

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Hi Magazine - Series 20 Volume 5 - 2023

Hi Magazine - Series 20 Volume 5 - 2023

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